SAP Partner News 38/2009

September 17, 2009 by Benjamin Blaume

T-Systems acquires SAP’s hosting customers (photo: Frank Völkel)

T-Systems acquires SAP’s hosting customers

T-Systems and SAP have announced that T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary for corporate customers, is set to take care of SAP’s hosting customers in Europe. The agreement means that almost 90 SAP customers will, in the future, store their data at T-Systems’ data centers.

The deal will not involve any transfer of staff or fixed assets. The parties anticipate that the transaction will be completed in early October 2009. Dr. Wolfgang Krips, senior vice president of SAP Managed Services with responsibility for SAP’s external hosting activities, said: “Even though there will be a transition to a new provider, I am confident that customers will find the gradual transition to T-Systems smooth and very manageable.”

Five X3650 servers replace old server landscape (photo: IBM)

ESK Ceramics streamlines its server landscape

ESK Ceramics, headquartered in Kempten, Germany has replaced its old server landscape with five x3650 servers from IBM. Previously, ESK had 31 servers in use at its own data center, with seven more at external hosting providers.

The new blade servers use Intel’s Quad-Core Xeon Processor X5470 with a clock speed of 3.33 GHz, which has been on the market since September 2008. Using VMware technology, the seven SAP applications and the underlying DB2 database run on two of the x3650 servers. Data center floor-space requirements have been reduced by 80%, and power and cooling costs have dropped by a similar amount.

Intel’s latest Xeon generation X5500 has been available since March 2009 and is based on Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem. According to Intel, this offers 2.25 times better performance than the X5400 series, plus improved power saving.

Freudenberg IT and ReadSoft join forces

ReadSoft and Freudenberg IT have announced that they will be cooperating in the area of on-demand solutions. In the future, the two companies plan to offer SAP customers end-to-end solutions for optimized document processes. The first joint solution was presented mid-September at DMS Expo 2009, Europe’s leading event for enterprise content and document management, in Cologne.

Lynx enhances its consulting expertise

Lynx Consulting, headquartered in Bielefeld, Germany, has purchased a minority equity stake in the Hamburg-based IT consultancy GITG, which specializes in healthcare solutions. For Lynx, the move represents a boost to its competencies in the area of healthcare. For GITG – which now operates under the new name of Lynx-GITG – the cooperation means access to more employees and skills.

In the long term, the area of healthcare is slated to become the fifth industry focus area in Lynx’s portfolio, along with manufacturing, retail, banking, and the consumer goods sector.